New Jersey Democrats Ask Secretary of State to Ignore Wildly-Mismatched Signatures on Absentee Ballot Requests

Currently, when a county clerk rejects an absentee ballot request, they try to contact the voter, through mail, by phone, and in some cases, they make an attempt to contact the voter in person. And a person who has spoken to some of New Jersey’s county clerks says they’re granting wide latitude on signature styles; for them to reject a ballot request because of the signature, it has to be dramatically different from the one on file.

Could some of these cases be the circumstance an election official misjudging natural deviation in two handwriting samples from the same person? Certainly, and that's why the current system has clerks reaching out to the rejected voters (presuming they actually exist) to sort out the discrepancy. But Democrats want to short-circuit the established methods of sorting out the problem, and in fact ban rejections based on signature mismatches entirely.

Yes, by all means, let's ignore the obvious sham nature of these requests and issue ballots anyway. Imaginary people and dead people have rights, too.

Of the 11 counties in the 23rd, seven will be using paper ballot/optical scanning voting systems rather than the lever machines, said John Conklin, spokesman for the state Board of Elections. Two counties will combine old and new systems, while another two -- Clinton and Essex -- are keeping lever machines.

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One wrinkle to note if the 23rd becomes a photo-finish race: The paper/scan devices are being used on a pilot basis -- and they haven't been fully certified by the state.

Conklin said the devices are on track to be certified by the end of the year. And Lipari added that they've been trouble-free so far.

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In a related matter, the Associated Press reports Democrats are heading to court seeking to have voting machines impounded on election night. Democrats say they're going to court early because a portion of the district is requiring people who registered to vote in time for federal elections, but not in time for state and local elections, to vote on ballots -- not on the pull-lever machines.

The only election Democrats aren't going to steal is VA-GOV, because that one is just silly.